Visigothic Buckle, Bronze

Visigothic Belt Buckle, Bronze

Visigothic belt buckle with square fitting. Replica of a 7th-century find with bird-head motifs from a private collection. Length approx. 80mm, suitable for a belt width of 25 mm. On the back are eyelets, with which the buckle can be sewn on the leather or simply secured by pins made of wood or metal.

The Visigoths

The tribes of the Goths may have originated in the area of southern Scandinavia, possibly also in the Vistula region, where peoples with the names Gauts or Gotons are localised as early as around the time of Christ's birth. According to the historian Jordanes, it was overpopulation that triggered the gradual migration of the Goths upstream from the Vistula and Danube in the late 2nd century. Archaeological evidence shows that the Goths first appeared as a people in the Black Sea region, which was followed by warlike conflicts with the Roman Empire. In the middle of the 3rd century, raids on the provinces of Dacia, Thrace, Moesia and Illyria followed.
Already in the late 3rd century, the Gothic tribes of the Greutungen and the Terwigen split into an eastern and a western group. The Latinised name of the Visigothi, from which the term "Visigoths" later developed, is a self-designation for the "Noble Goths". It cannot be assumed that this was an ethnically homogeneous group, but rather an amalgamation of various heterogeneous associations.
At the Battle of Adrianople in 375 AD, Visigothic troop units in what is now Turkey defeated the Eastern Roman army of Emperor Valens and were appointed "foederati" just a few years later. This made them formal allies of Rome and allowed them to settle in the empire to control areas close to the border. Already in the early 5th century, the Visigoths formed the Tolosan Empire in southern Gaul near Toulouse. As allies of the Romans, the Visigoths went into battle primarily against the Huns, on whose side in turn fought Ostrogothic and Gepidic warriors. In the battle of the Catalaunian Fields in 451 AD, the advance of the Huns was stopped by the joint struggle of the Romans and Visigoths.
The influence of the Visigoths on the politics of Western Rome increased more and more in the following years. The Tolsan Empire soon came into conflict with the Franks, who also filled the Roman power vacuum in northern Gaul as foederati. King Eurich finally terminated the Foederati treaty with Rome, occupied additional territories in Gaul and extended the influence of the Visigoths as far as Spain. With the fall of Western Rome in 476 AD, the Visigoths and the Franks remained the last major antagonists on Gallic soil. The Battle of Vouillé was lost, and the Franks finally pushed the Visigoths back into their territories in Spain. There, the Visigothic empire consoled itself with the military support of the Ostrogothic king Theoderic, who was now also the king of the Visigoths for a short time. After Theoderic's death in 526 AD, the Visigoths were independent again and Toledo became the new capital of the Toledan Empire.

However, the empire of the Visigoths in Spain was constantly marked by foreign policy disputes with Franks, Eastern Romans and Spanish tribes, and domestically weakened by the power claims of various dynasties. In addition, there were religious conflicts with the local Catholic population, which led to the Arian Visigothic upper class eventually converting to Catholicism. With the invasion of the Muslim Moors in 711 AD, the decline of the Visigothic Empire in Spain finally began.  Yet the Visigoths probably comprised only 2 to 3% of the population of Hispania, and the traces they have left behind today are correspondingly small.